No time to waste with START treaty

At Cazenovia College, I teach a seminar for first-year students entitled, “Cosmos,” patterned on Carl Sagan’s landmark public television series and book of the same name. The overarching theme is humankind’s long quest to comprehend the universe, and the place of our species within it.

At the end of the course, we consider Sagan’s poignant question, “Who speaks for Earth?” Sagan implored us to avoid a “nuclear winter,” a global, catastrophic cascade of effects from a massive nuclear exchange between the United States and the then-Soviet Union that he and other mid-1980s scientists calculated could fill the atmosphere with smoke, blocking the sunlight and ultimately resulting in the failure of agriculture and the deaths of millions.

“Cosmos” was one of a number of influences that led the United States and the Soviets toward nuclear weapons reduction. A Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed in 1991, prohibiting either country from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads on various delivery systems (mostly missiles).

Reduction continued so that by 2001, the nuclear arsenal had been reduced by approximately 80 percent. Nonetheless, the specter of nuclear winter remains. Using improved computers and atmospheric models, scientists in 2007 fundamentally verified Sagan’s pessimistic predictions.

START expired in December of 2009. In April, 2010, the New START treaty was signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev. If ratified, the treaty will limit the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550. But there’s a problem. The flames of dissent for rapid ratification are being fanned by political winds currently flowing through the corridors of a lame-duck U.S. Senate.

Some senators who can influence the collection of the 67 votes necessary for ratification, most notably John Kyl but there are others, now call for additional discussion and consideration, despite numerous briefings, plus 21 Senate hearings on the treaty that have been held already this year.

I’d like to suggest a reality check for those who think we have the luxury of time. I’d like them to consider further reducing the possibility of nuclear winter through the provisions of New START. But if that’s too abstract, too hypothetical, then journey as I have over the past 20 years to Germany and Japan.

Go stare into the crematoria at Dachau. Go view the children’s blood-stained clothes and bent bicycles preserved in the glass cases of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Go stand at Ground Zero there, and reflect on humankind’s seemingly inexhaustible propensity for aggression.

“Who speaks for Earth?” is not a political question. It’s a moral one. And the answer is, “We all do.”

Donald A. McCrimmon is vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Cazenovia College.